Workrate can be deceiving in football. A player can bustle around for 90 minutes with plenty of the ball and yet hold back his team through lack of intent. When players start to think that running around, making sideways passes and looking busy are the same as having purpose, teams get into trouble. Yes, the manager can’t fault the workrate, but matches aren’t won with directionless effort.
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I’ve seen a few of these knocking around online and managed to pick one up fairly cheaply. The design is the classic Adidas template which was used for Colombia’s Italia 90 strip, leading me to believe this is from the 90/91 season,
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Over the years I’ve owned a fair few football shirts (ever since getting the Evening Gazette Boro shirt for Christmas as a kid). When I started travelling and following other teams I resolved to collect at least one from each of them. So I thought it was time to start documenting them on here. Consider this a rare bonus feature.
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The nearly-completed Illovszky Rudolf Stadion – future home of Vasas FC.
Due to an improbable series of events, I ended up being interviewed on Hungarian national media for creating an Instagram account about statues (@statuesofbudapest – should you be curious). The topic of the interview turned to football and I mentioned how I’d come to support Vasas since arriving in Budapest (namely – I like underdogs and the shared ironworking history of Vasas and Middlesbrough).
Continue reading(*this pun only works if you know that Balajti rhymes with Delight-y in Hungarian, rendering it worse than useless)
Before coming over to Hungary I lived in Tokyo and followed Verdy who – like Vasas FC – are another former championship-winning side fallen on hard times. Tokyo Verdy (formerly Yomiuri Verdy and Verdy Kawasaki) won Japan’s top flight 7 times in the 80s and 90s, boasting players such as legendary goal-snaffler Kazu Miura and Brazilian-born Japan international Ruy Ramos.
Continue readingWith no league win in six and a managerial firing, I have to say I wasn’t expecting much from the home team in this one. Ceglédi lay just a place and a few points below Vasas and had won two of their last three. They also have a kit that demostrates what an Ikea international team would wear. Surely they saw a chance to take a big scalp against a side lacking confidence and in freefall down the league table.
It’s 1949 and László Kubala is sitting in the back of a truck, speeding away from the Budapest and the country of his birth under cover of night.
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So the Károly Kis reign of terror at Vasas FC ends after just a few months, the doughty veteran has been given the boot after proving unequal to the tasks of:
A) motivating his players past the 45 minute mark,
B) holding on to any sort of lead,
and C) beating teams whose home crowds are slightly sparser than a Katie Hopkins dinner party.
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One of the unfair things about dipping into a team’s story is that you don’t get the whole sense of things. Take Tamás Vaskó for example. I’d never really given him a second thought before this season. I now know he was a Vasas youth product and played for Bristol City for a bit. I know also that he’s the definition of a journeyman (12 clubs in his career, barely time to paint the bathroom). I know that he has one of those slicked-back mohican hairdos that immediately unravel into a wet duck’s arse on the football pitch. I know that he’s a committed tackler and seems to be one of the few players who’s consistently given his all this season for the team…
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